Fang, The
of the Space Wolves Chapter]] The Fang is the famed citadel of the Space Wolves Space Marine Chapter that was built at the direction of the Primarch Leman Russ during the early days of the Great Crusade. This massive and cunningly constructed stronghold serves as the Chapter's home and fortress-monastery and is located on the icy Death World of Fenris. At the centre of the vast plateau of the northern polar continent of Asaheim there is a range of mountains whose peaks are said to rise above the atmosphere. The tallest of all lies in the very middle of the range, dwarfing its fellows and rising like a single gnarled tooth above those that surround it. This peak, and the Chapter fortress that is built upon and within it, is The Fang. Despite being almost universally referred to as "The Fang," the Vlka Fenryka (Space Wolves) refer to their fortress-monastery simply as the Aett. In Juvjk, the local Fenrisian dialect of Low Gothic, this means "clan-home", "fireplace" or "den". Exterior of the Fang Built during the Great Crusade, the fortress-citadel of the mighty VI Space Marine Legion is one of the greatest bastions of the Imperium, still reckoned the greatest beyond the Imperial Palace on Terra itself. Vast beyond imagining, a single peak rears up on the horizon, as if the core of the world of Fenris had been shoved through its mantle into a terrifying, unmatched pinnacle, a conical mountain-mass soaring up into the darkening sky. Its flanks were sheer and snow-clad on jagged shelves of rock, glossy with ancient, undisturbed ice. In every direction, lesser summits crowded the view, clustering close to the broken skyline in the shadow of the Great One, the Shoulder of the Allfather; the volda hamarrki, the World Spine. Against the gathering dark of the dwindling atmosphere, tiny lights shone at the distant summit. They marked the habitation of the Sky Warriors, the abode of the demigods, itself a tiny fraction of the bulk of that vast peak. The inhabitants of that place, whether kaerl (armed Chapter Serfs) or Astartes, called it the Aett. To the rest of the galaxy, awe-struck by half-snatched legends of Leman Russ’ fortress and never likely to see it, it was just The Fang. Many times during its long history it has stood inviolable whilst the forces of disorder dashed themselves against it. The Fang is clad in armour of immense thickness and strength and is cloaked by Void Shields more powerful than those found on even the most mighty of the Emperor's warships. Dark shafts cut miles into the mountainside conceal potent defence lasers that are capable of blasting apart even the most heavily armoured spacecraft. These huge weapons are as ancient as the Chapter itself, the geothermal reactors that power them testament to the precious technology from the distant past. The peaks closest to The Fang itself had entered the legends of the Vlka Fenryka, etched on their communal consciousness since the Allfather had led them there in the half-remembered twilight of the Chapter's Founding. To the south was Asfryk, white-sided and blunt, the Cloudtearer. To the east were soaring Friemiaki and Tror, the Brothers of Thunder. To the west was bleak Krakgard, the dark peak where heroes were burned, and to the north were Broddja and Ammagrimgul, the guardians of the Hunter’s Gate through which Space Wolves Aspirants passed to take the Trials of Passage. The ways between the peaks were treacherous and known only to those who had trodden the paths as Aspirants. All were scarred with precipitous drops and deep crevasses. Some hunt-ways were built on solid stone, whereas others were on bridges of ice that would crumble to nothing with the first application of weight. Some led true, taking the hunter from the clefts in the shadow of the summits down to the plains where the prey dwelt; others led nowhere but into darkness, to the caves that riddled the bowels of the ancient landscape, full of nothing but ice-gnawed bones and despair. The Fang possessed two external gates known as the Bloodfire Gate and Sunrising Gate. The two portals were high up the sheer sides of the mountain, and stood at the termination of massive ridges between the peaks, allowing movement up towards them from the surrounding highlands. The ridges ran up to the citadel gates like huge causeways of stone, each kilometres wide and worn smooth by the endless gnawing of the winds. In the half-forgotten millennia past, the Allfather and Leman Russ had walked on that same stone, planning the construction of the Aett together, seeing how the tortured landscape of Asaheim could be made to house the greatest fortress outside Terra. Russ had made it so that the two Gates overlooked entirely bare approaches, such that any massed advance on them would provoke a slaughter. The Gates themselves were wide enough for a hundred men to walk through abreast. The colossal structure of Adamantium, granite and Ceramite bristled with linked Bolter turrets, rocket-launchers and static Plasma Cannons. The firepower collected there was vast, the kind of arsenal more suited to an Imperial Navy Battle Group than a land-bound citadel. Across the entire structure stretched the citadel's Void Shields, glistening faintly as the oblique sunlight slanted through clouds of burning engine oil. Interior of The Fang Hould The Hould was the beating heart of the Aett. The thousands of mortal warriors, craftsmen, technicians and labourers who maintained the massive citadel lived out their entire lives there. They rarely left The Fang unless taken out of it by troop transports: the air was thin even for Fenrisian natives at that altitude. Their skin was as pale as the ice that covered the upper slopes, and they were all Fenris-born, of the stock that still roamed across the ice-fields below Asaheim and provided the recruits for the Space Wolves. Their breed had been taken into the vast halls of the Aett when the first chambers had been hollowed out, and all could trace their lineages back over thirty generations or more. Only some – the kaerls – were kept at arms at all times, but all knew how to wield a blade and fire a skjoldtar, the heavy, armour-piercing projectile weapon similar to an Autogun favoured by the Aettguard, the body of kaerls committed to the defence of Russ fortress. They were the children of a Death World, and from the youngest infant to the oldest crone they knew the art of killing. Jarlheim Higher up, past the huge, shadowy bulwark of the Fangthane, was the Jarlheim, the abode of the Sky Warriors. No mortal remained on those levels except on the orders of his Sky Warrior masters, for it was there that the twelve Great Companies of the Chapter were housed. The halls of the Space Wolves were often empty and silent, since they were ever called away on campaign to some far-flung corner of their galactic protectorate. At least one Great Company always kept the hearths burning, however, tending the sacred flames and paying obeisance to the wards that kept maleficarum from entering The Fang. In the Jarlheim were the warshrines to the fallen, the totems collected by the Rune Priests from far-off worlds, the Armouries full of sacred weaponry. In the holy places, tattered banners from past campaigns were laid to rest amid the dusty rows of skulls, armour and other prizes. When the warning klaxons blared across the demesnes of the twelve Great Companies, the narrow ways were lit with a savage fire -- for when the masters of the mountain had been summoned, it was as if the earth itself had been shaken into sentience. The stone reverberated with a deep tremor as the massed wolf-spirits were goaded into life. Armour was strapped on and drilled into place, beast pelts reverently draped over the Ceramite, runes daubed on shoulder-guards in thick animal blood, charms hung piously over necks and wound around armoured wrists. Deep within the centre of the maze of shafts, galleries and tunnels, there came the beating of a great drum. It underpinned all other sounds, thumping out a heartbeat rhythm of dissonant savagery. Other drums soon joined it. The power of the drums' vibrations made the entire labyrinth resonate with a growing crescendo of hatred and pent-up aggression. There were few sights more intimidating in the entire galaxy than a Space Wolf Great Company preparing itself for war. Hall of the Fangthane The Hall of the Fangthane was the chamber that linked the Hould and the Jarlheim. It had been delved centrally, right into the inner core of the mountain and directly below the landing stages of the Valgard. One of a number of bulwark points within the Aett, it was the only route from one region to the next. Any enemy, should they somehow make it inside The Fang at the gate level, would have to pass up through the Fangthane to enter the higher galleries. In a fortress of wonders, the Fangthane had an awe-inspiring quality all of its own. Its walls soared high up into the dark, hundreds of metres, curving gently toward a roof lost in gloom. The entire populace of the Hould, hundreds of thousands of souls, could assemble in its cavernous space, filling the frozen chamber floor. They entered from the west, ascending the huge Stair of Ogvai, lined with images of ancient heroes carved from the mountain-stone and lit by flickering torches. In the chamber itself, images of Fenris had been delved into the walls, each more than fifty metres high and adorned with intricate knotwork. There were symbols of the Great Companies of old – wolfsheads, broken moons, claws, axe-shafts and bleached skulls. Monumental images of Fenris’ elemental powers – the storm-spirit, the ice-bringer, the thunder-heart – were picked out in the flickering light. Above them all were the runes, the sacred sigils that channelled the soul of the Death World into the sphere of the living and warded against maleficarum. When fully assembled, the ranks of grey-clad men and women who made up the Chapter's thralls marched between the two massive granite statues of Leman Russ' Fenrisian Wolf brothers Freki and Geri that guarded the west gate, each ten metres tall at the shoulder and crouched ready to pounce. Ahead of the assembly area, the chamber stretched away into the distance, vaster than any cathedral, lit only by racks of blood-red fire in braziers of iron as tall as a man. And at the far end, most brightly lit of all, there had once stood the mightiest of all the many statues in The Fang, the colossal image of Leman Russ. The size of a ''Warhound''-class Titan, the granite Primarch gazed across the space with a snarl on his craggy features. He had his Frostblade Mjalnar clutched in one hand; the other was clenched into a balled fist. Other Primarchs might have been rendered in a more contemplative pose, but not Russ. He had been carved by the stone-shapers of Fenris as he had been in life: an engine of war, a living god, the living embodiment of the primal urge to kill. During the First Battle of The Fang in the 32nd Millennium, the Thousand Sons' Daemon Primarch Magnus the Red had profaned this sacred chamber and performed the ultimate desecration. In an act reminiscent of the one performed by Russ against Magnus during the Burning of Prospero, the Daemon Primarch ripped the statue of Leman Russ from its foundations and broke its back across his knee. Valgard The Fang was vast beyond compassing -- a huge network of tunnels, shafts and chambers that riddled the highest levels of the peak. Even so, the fortress proper was dwarfed by the full bulk of the mountain, and only the very upper reaches had ever been delved into habitation. For the most part, the Wolves dwelt underground, their lairs hidden under kilometres of solid rock. Only at the very pinnacle, the terminus of the Valgard level, did artificial structures break the surface in any quantity. It was there that the mighty landing stages and docking berths had been constructed, clustered around massive towers that thrust from sheer cliffs hundreds of metres tall. Ancient drive mechanisms powered service shafts a kilometre deep, hauling materiel and wargear from depots in the heart of the mountain and delivering them to the transports waiting in the hangars. They were always busy, those places, testament to the restless spirit of the Wolves and their ceaseless voyaging into the sea of stars. High up at the summit of the Valgard, ships could blast off from launch platforms and large landing bays where Thunderhawk gunships mingled with the chapter’s few remaining Stormbirds. Here hlaupa-class escorts, heavily armed variants of the Imperial Navy’s Cobra-class Destroyers Vessels, could dock. Vessels of such size would not normally have been able to dock within a planetary atmosphere, but the sheer altitude of the Valgard landing stages made it possible for them to make planetfall on Fenris. Chamber of the Annulus The Chamber of the Annulus was high up in the pinnacle of the Fang, in the Valgard near the very summit of the vast fortress, surrounded by a seam of pure granite. It had been one of the first halls to be delved from the living rock by the Terran geomancers brought to Fenris to establish the VI Legion in the time of legends. In that age, tech-adepts had been able to level the very mountains and raise them up again, to shape the continents and quell the tumults of the Death World’s seasonal upheavals. They could have made Fenris a paradise if they’d chosen, and it was only on the primarch’s orders that the planet was never altered from its fearsome character. Russ wished for his homeworld to remain the great proving ground of warriors, a crucible in which its humanity would be tested and honed forever. So, as it had happened, only one mountain out of the hundreds on Asaheim had been changed from its primeval form, its chambers hollowed out and wrought by ancient devices of forgotten, terrible power. Now the knowledge brought by those long-dead artificers was fading fast, and no citadel of comparable strength and majesty would ever be built again. The Fang was unique in the Imperium, the product of a genius that was slowly bleeding out of the galaxy as humanity stumbled and unlearned the lessons of the past. The'' Chamber of the Annulus'' was where the Great Wolf and his Wolf Lords of the Chapter gathered during councils of war. The twelve jarls would gather round the Grand Annulus, the huge circle on the floor of the chamber with the sigils of the Great Companies inscribed on panels of stone. Borek's Seal The journey down the many hundred levels from the Valgard at the summit of the Fang to the lower reaches of the Hould took a long time. The only way to reach this isolated area was by riding a number of turbo-elevators, tramp down several long spiral staircases hewn from the stone and marched across countless rough-cut chambers glowing with the embers of old fires. With every level that is passed, the decorations in the rock become less ornate, the glowglobes a little less close together, the voices a little more hushed. At the base of the Hould, buried kilometres down into the rock, was Borek’s Seal, the largest of the Fang’s innumerable chambers. Even more massive than the Fangthane, the enormous cavern was a gloomy and shadow-draped place. Just as the Fangthane guarded the approaches from the Hould to the Jarlheim, Borek’s Seal warded passage to the levels below, the Hammerhold and the half-explored Underfang. It was colossal, the size of a battleship’s hull, though almost empty of decoration and devoid of the pelts, bones and carvings that adorned most chambers of the Aett. The bare rock walls were unfinished and jagged, a reminder of the primal nature of the Wolves’ ancient origins. A few fires burned low in vast circular pits, but their light was weak and the perma-chill was little disturbed by them. Across the yawning cavern, huge columns supported the far-off rood. Each was the width of a Rhino chassis, a shaft of naked rock that glinted with points of red from the low flames. No thrall came down this far, for this was below the Gate level, the limit of the kaerls’ patrol circuits, and beyond it none but the Iron Priests went. Even here, within the Aett, there were dangers. For on Fenris, the Space Wolves did not eliminate the danger on their world, even though they could. They kept it close to them, learned to live with it, using it to keep themselves strong. The Underfang has many perils, some not known even to the Great Wolf. Hammerhold Within the Hammerhold, the vast network of the Chapter's forges, the sound of hammers resonated everywhere. It ran through the chambers, resounding in the stone, vibrating in the deep shafts, echoing in the hidden vaults. A single bridge of stone, spanned out across the abyss, six metres wide and without a rail. It disappeared into the gloom and haze of the distance. Hundreds of metres down, in the huge cavern spanned by the bridge, was a vision of Hel. Gigantic, hulking furnaces, each the height of a Warlord Titan and twice as wide, threw off clouds of blood-red light. Channels of heat-blackened stone carried rivers of fire from one inferno to the next, passing through wheels of iron and plunging pistons. The silhouettes of servitor-thralls, their wire-studded spines curled over from hunching, crept between the colossal machinery, checking flickering pict-readouts and tending brass-lined cogitator banks. The vast space hummed with a low, rumbling activity. Along clattering conveyor belts amid the forges, Freija could just make out the embryonic shells of vehicle plating, artillery barrels, even bodyarmour parts. And then there were the hammers. They were borne by rows of muscle-enhanced, metal-ribbed, faceless servitors, chained to their adamantium anvils by segmented nerve-conduits, endlessly working, endlessly beating. There were ranks upon ranks of them, more machine than human, moulded into mindless golems by the uncaring arts of the fleshmakers. They were the perfect workers: tireless, uncomplaining, hugely strong, content to hammer away in the pits of fire until death from exhaustion gave them a final release. Underfang The Underfang represented the very bowels of the mountain fortress. It was a universe of stone marked by the increasing heat radiated by the geothermal reactors that provided The Fang with its power and by the ancient Armouries and hidden vaults of the Chapter where the Space Wolves kept their greatest secrets -- and their honoured dead. Halls of the Revered Fallen It takes nearly ten minutes of solid walking to traverse the yawning forge-halls. The bridge terminated as it reached a cliff of rough-hewn rock. An iron-lined door had been carved into it, crested with the sign of the two-headed wolf Morkai, the Fenrisian Guardian of the Dead. The image looked old, far older than anything in the Hould, and the edges were smooth from the hot, wearing winds. The doorway was open and there were no guards. A single, isolated green light winked at the base of the heavy frame -- a disruptor field. A large corridor lay beyond, wide enough to drive a Rhino through, descending ever deeper into the subterranean levels of the Fang, finally terminating at an extensively worked wall. There were huge doors in the centre of it, once more crested with the twin faces of Morkai. The space around the doors was studded with arcane machinery – coils of coolant piping, statuesque clusters of power transformers, lattices of ironwork covering unidentifiable workings within. Incredibly, given the oppressive cold and distance from maintenance crews, the low hum from the machines sounded healthy. This was the threshold of the Halls of the Revered Fallen. It was here that the Chapter's honoured ancients, the Dreadnoughts, lay in eternal slumber until awakened for war by the Chapter's Iron Priests. They were woken from their stasis-like slumbers in the depths of The Fang only in times of direst need, for each of these revered heroes embodies a part of the Chapter's history. The eldest of most revered of their kind lay here as well. Bjorn, called the Fell-Handed by the skjalds when declaiming the sagas, was the last of the Chapter to have walked the ice with Russ, the mightiest of all the Wolves, this Venerable Dreadnought was a living link to the Time of Wonder. Utility Level At the deepest levels of The Fang, at the base of the region known as the Underfang, lay the massive geothermal generators which provided the great citadel with all of the power required for its operations. This included the blazing capillaries of magma which brought superheated rock up from the mantle of Fenris to heat the water that provided the fortress' gigantic steam turbines with their motive force. This area of the fortress-monastery was maintained by a legion of Chapter thralls who were sometimes guided in their endeavours by the arcane technomancy of the Iron Priests. History Notable Campaigns *'First Battle for The Fang (Unknown Date.M32)' - Harek Ironhelm was the Chapter's Great Wolf during the 32nd Millennium. Ironhelm sought for many years to bring the Thousand Sons' Primarch Magnus the Red to battle. Several times Magnus appeared to him in visions amongst the ruins of devastated cities that had been laid to ruin by the Thousand Sons Traitor Legion striking from out of the Eye of Terror and taunted the Great Wolf for his inability to stop him. After many fruitless efforts to catch up with the Chaos Space Marines, Harek became obsessed, and took to searching worlds along the edge of the Eye of Terror itself. Eventually he found what he believed to be the Thousand Sons' secret base on the world of Gangava and launched a full-scale planetary assault against it. This was a deception intended to draw the bulk of the Space Wolves' forces from their homeworld, leaving it undefended; for in truth Gangava was held by a Chaos force allied to Magnus but it served only as a distraction, intended to draw the Space Wolves away from their homeworld so that a massive Thousand Sons' fleet could besiege Fenris itself. The Space Wolves' fortress-monastery, The Fang, was held by only a small force of Space Wolves and their Servitor-thralls. The orbital defences were taken out, as well as the few remaining Space Wolves vessels performing void duty. The Thousand Sons had blinded the Chapter's Rune Priests to their coming invasion. Concerned, the Rune Priests knew that the Aett had wards in the stone, hundreds of them. Signs of aversion have been carved into the rock and infused with the world-spirit. No sorcerer could enter there, not even the mightiest of them. There were only six remaining Rune Priests to defend their mighty citadel. Two full Rune Priests and four acolytes whose powers were untried in combat. The Wolf of the Watch, Vaer Greyloc, Jarl of the Twelfth Great Company, led the defence of the Aett from the forces of the Archenemy. For forty days and forty nights the Thousand Sons assaulted the citadel. Bjorn the Fell-Handed, the most ancient of the Space Wolves' Dreadnoughts, was eventually awoken from his long sleep and took charge of the defence. The assault was held at bay by a force of Wolf Scouts as Haakon Blackwing escaped to Gangava to locate Harek. Shamed and furious, Harek Ironhelm returned to meet Magnus in battle on the slopes of the Fang itself. Although Magnus was terribly wounded, even Harek could not stand against the power of a Primarch who had been further exalted to become a Daemon Prince of Tzeentch. Harek was slain, but the Thousand Sons were ultimately defeated and scattered, the Traitor Legion's warbands forced to return to the Planet of the Sorcerers within the Eye of Terror. *'Second Battle for The Fang (Unknown Date.M36)' - During the Age of Apostasy's Plague of Unbelief, Apostate Cardinal Bucharis of Gathalamore launched an invasion of Fenris on his way to Terra. For three years, Bucharis laid siege to the Fang after the Space Wolves' fleet waged furious battles against the Renegade Imperial Navy forces of Bucharis. Some of the Space Wolves' starships managed to break through, such as the cruiser named the Claw of Russ. However, the fighting saw millions of Fenrisians fall to the invaders as the people of Fenris, the Space Wolves and even the Fenrisian Wolves of the wild waged war against their corrupted Chaotic attackers. Despite numerous efforts to break the siege, the Space Wolves could not get through, until returning from a five-year-long expedition to the Eye of Terror, Wolf Lord Kyrl Grimblood and his Great Company smashed through Bucharis' fleet and then launched a devastating assault on the rear of Bucharis' siege forces, killing thousands and sending many fleeing into the wilds of Fenris to die horribly at the claws of the unforgiving creatures and the touch of the deadly weather. With Kyrl's efforts weakening the invaders, the Space Wolves launched a break-out counteroffensive and smashed through their attackers, routing them. Bucharis was forced to flee and while his defeat at the hands of the Space Wolves did not end his reign, others fought against the "Plague of Unbelief" he had unleashed and Bucharis was eventually defeated by a resurgent Imperium. Yet it is due to the efforts of Kyrl Grimblood that the ambitions of the Apostate Cardinal Bucharis were brought to a turning point and the Second Battle for the Fang was won. *'First War for Armageddon & the 'Days of Shame' (444-445.M41)' - The most famous action during the First War for Armageddon was when the Great Wolf Logan Grimnar lead 300 Space Wolves alongside 109 Grey Knights against the World Eaters' Daemon Primarch Angron and a diabolic horde of Khornate Berserkers. The Imperial forces eventually rose victorious and banished Angron back to the Warp from whence he came. The Space Wolves continued to fight in the First War for Armageddon through to its conclusion. Although they had defeated all that the Forces of Chaos had thrown at them during this bloody campaign, the victorious soldiers of Armageddon were doomed from the start. They had gained knowledge of the existence of Chaos, a forbidden secret of the Imperium, and been exposed to its corruption. The Inquisition had no intention of letting the wider Imperium discover the true nature of the daemonic foe that had attacked Armageddon, or of the ways and means victory had been achieved with the aid of the Grey Knights; the Inquisitors present voted to sterilise and quarantine-for-life the remaining population of the Hive World even though it was generally considered untainted, and ignorant of the truth concerning the existence of Chaos. The valiant Imperial Guard, PDF regiments and other human defenders of the world were to suffer the same fate or be liquidated. The Inquisition ordered all of the people who had fought on the planet, except for the Space Marines, to be rounded up at gunpoint, sterilised to prevent any possible Chaos-induced mutations in their offspring and placed in Adeptus Arbites work camps across the galaxy, with their world to be re-colonised by people from other regions of the galaxy with no knowledge of the war. Over the strident protests of the Space Wolves and their Great Wolf Logan Grimnar, the Inquisition followed through with this plan, and the Grey Knights frigate Karabela still in orbit of Armageddon was ordered to disable the first Imperial Guard troop transport to leave Armageddon as it approached a Warp jump point off-world. Following this first incident, a months-long cat-and-mouse campaign took place between the Space Wolves and their human charges from Armageddon on one side, and the Inquisition and Grey Knights on the other. It was characterised by increasingly deadly fratricidal actions by both sides, and rapidly escalated into a full-fledged Imperial civil war between the Space Wolves and the Inquisition. Grimnar saw the Inquisition's actions following the war as betraying the very people who had honourably fought for their homes and for the Emperor, and if the Imperium did not protect those who fought for it, he did not believe it had any purpose. Finally, in an attempt to bring the conflict to an end, in 445.M41 the Inquisitor Lord Ghesmei Kysnaros ordered his growing Inquisitorial armada, including Grey Knights Chapter fleet vessels, to Fenris, the Space Wolves' lightly defended homeworld, in a last-ditch gambit to force those Astartes to comply with the Inquisition's wishes concerning the liquidation or imprisonment of Armageddon's survivors. Kysnaros' armada, including a multitude of Inquisition warships, Grey Knights vessels, and the entire Chapter fleet and strength of the Red Hunters Space Marine Chapter, arrived at Fenris and surrounded the planet in high orbit whilst targeting The Fang, the Space Wolves' fortress-monastery, for a devastating orbital bombardment. The planet was virtually undefended as the vast majority of the Space Wolves and their Chapter fleet were dispersed on missions across the galaxy. Kysnaros again asked for a parlay with any ranking Space Wolves present. A delegation consisting of Kysnaros, the Grey Knight Hyperion (who commanded respect amongst the Space Wolves as the "Bladebreaker") and Inquisitor Annika Jarlsdottyr, a native Fenrisian, arrived at The Fang for the meeting. The Space Wolves had awoken the Venerable Dreadnought Bjorn the Fell-Handed to deal with the Inquisitorial party. The ancient warrior who had once fought beside the Primarch Leman Russ during the Great Crusade immediately received the unbidden respect and reverence of the Inquisitorial delegation, and was thought to be a more temperate and wise representative for the Chapter than Logan Grimnar. Kysnaros asked for the Space Wolves' express obeisance to Imperial authority and the chain of command, and a Penitent Crusade to be undertaken to expiate the Chapter's guilt for their attacks upon the servants of the Inquisition. In exchange, the Inquisition and the Imperium at large would take no other action or censure against the Chapter. Before negotiations could go further, to the surprise of everyone, the Space Wolves' Chapter fleet under the command of Logan Grimnar translated from the Warp near Fenris. As the Inquisition delegation made haste to their flagship, a short, brutal fight ensued over the planet. Eventually Grimnar and his Wolf Guard teleported to Kysnaros' flagship's bridge, where the Great Wolf unceremoniously beheaded the Inquisitor Lord. Grimnar then proceeded to maul the last survivor of the Grey Knights' Squad Castian who had survived the conflict on Armageddon. To save his brother, Hyperion confronted Grimnar, and in the duel that followed, he used his psychic powers to crack Grimnar's ancient, venerated Frost Axe Morkai. As Hyperion then confronted Grimnar and twenty Space Wolves alone, Bjorn the Fell-Handed teleported to the bridge and put an end to the fight. Bjorn told Grimnar that the internecine war between the Chapter and the Inquisition on behalf of the survivors of Armageddon had to stop. The Inquisitorial force should be allowed to leave Fenris unscathed, and the Space Wolves should reach an understanding with the Imperium. He then addressed Hyperion and Inquisitor Jarlsdottyr, as the ranking Inquisition representatives present, and told them that no Inquisition vessel should ever again appear above Fenris. Additionally, the Space Wolves who had acquired knowledge of the existence of the Grey Knights would not be mind-scrubbed, as was customary, though the remaining Armageddon survivors would be handed over for mind-wiping and dispersion across the galaxy. The Inquisition accepted the terms, and shortly afterward, the Inquisitorial force left the system. Yet, as a result of what they continued to believe was a betrayal of the Imperium's core values, the Space Wolves have never again trusted the Inquisition and move to frustrate Inquisitorial designs at every opportunity. Since this time the Space Wolves have had little but hostility to show towards the Inquisition and few indeed are the Inquisitors allowed into The Fang in recent times. Sources *''Codex: Space Wolves'' (5th Edition), p. 13 *''Codex: Space Wolves'' (2nd Edition), p. 43 *''Codex: Sisters of Battle'' (2nd Edition) pp. 39-40 *''Battle of the Fang'' (Novel) by Chris Wraight *''Prospero Burns'' (Novel) by Dan Abnett *''The Emperor's Gift'' (Novel) by Aaron Dembski-Bowden Category:F Category:Space Wolves Category:Space Marines Category:Imperium Category:Imperial Technology